In a 5gal filtered and heavy planted tank-50% water change every week to 2 weeks...depending on number, species and growth state of the plants. I wouldn't worry about the ammonia in the well water or cycling per se. The active plant growth will take care of the ammonia and any cycling issue.

You can sit your premix jug of water you use for water changes in hot/warm water to bring it to temp for water changes. Or, adjust at the tap and fill your jugs with like temp water to start. It is better on the Betta to try and get your replacement water fairly close to the tank water temp for water changes.

is there any real use in reusing water from a cycled tank in order to remove all the detrius from the bottom? my 5g divided is cycled with 2 betta on either side. i have a nerite on the filter side and he's a bit messy. before when i did WC i had to change 3-4g of water to get most of the detrius and waste out of the gravel. it probably made the fins fragile and my VT had some tears a dew days after.

i just did a 2g wc but i bottled the water i removed and put 80% back into the tank while the rest of the water and detrius went to the toilet. i did another round of gravel vac and put back another 80% of the water until 80-90% of the detrius was removed from the gravel. i probably removed 1/3 g of the old water before i drained the 2 gallons i replaced for the tank. does anyone do this and is this even a good way to clean up after a snail/fish tank?

The beneficial bacteria are sticky and adhere to all the surface areas within the tank, in the top layer of the substrate and in the filter media...very little is in the water column itself and so removing all the water shouldn't hurt the cycle, however, you usually don't need to make 100% water changes anyway.

Too clean can be as bad as too dirty....you don't have or need to try and remove all the mulm/debris from the tank-some of this can be good and will help to feed good bacteria to help maintain the balance-By removing all the slow growing good bacteria can allow the faster growing bad bacteria to take over. Not to mention antibody development and stress of total water changes and/or cupping, osmotic shock...etc.....

The beneficial bacteria are sticky and adhere to all the surface areas within the tank, in the top layer of the substrate and in the filter media...very little is in the water column itself and so removing all the water shouldn't hurt the cycle, however, you usually don't need to make 100% water changes anyway.

Too clean can be as bad as too dirty....you don't have or need to try and remove all the mulm/debris from the tank-some of this can be good and will help to feed good bacteria to help maintain the balance-By removing all the slow growing good bacteria can allow the faster growing bad bacteria to take over. Not to mention antibody development and stress of total water changes and/or cupping, osmotic shock...etc.....

Thank You very much ofl. I do Finder the nerite very useful for algea centrów but he poops everywhere and it doesnt look very Nice at All. That was the reason why I try to remove as much as possible. I'll try to leave some of the detritus in the tank next water change.

The reason why I did near 100wc was to remove the detrius. I know better now than to have the water too clean.

The beneficial bacteria are sticky and adhere to all the surface areas within the tank, in the top layer of the substrate and in the filter media...very little is in the water column itself and so removing all the water shouldn't hurt the cycle, however, you usually don't need to make 100% water changes anyway.

Is there a typical amount of surface area needed for enough bacteria? Like a certain ratio of gallons to fish to filter, or something like that?

Also, I know that drying out the sponges and rinsing off the decorations/plants with untreated tap water is very bad (because of the chlorine) and will kill the BB...but just how tough is the BB? Is it very delicate, or like most bacteria, is it fairly resilient?

And one more question, sorry, so in a filtered tank, do you ever make a 100% water change?

Not that I have ever found, however, surface area is just one of the limiting factors with BB-you also have oxygen and food source. Once it dehydrates its dead.
As for 100% water changes...you can change out all the water-but I wouldn't over clean the filter media or clean non-viewing walls the same day...you could vacuum in all areas you could reach without moving anything.

When I had my Oscars-I did 100% plus water changes on their 75gal tank. I would vacuum the substrate-removing the water all the way down to the point that they would be sideways. Refill to near 75% and do it again on a weekly basis......Oscars are messy, messy fish...lol.....Some of the massive water change was more for them than water quality...They love to play in the fresh water as it was flowing in. Oscars are puppy dog like in some of their behaviors but at 10 inches. You can't have live plants with them or I never could..lol....they would dig them up and tear them to shreds. If I put something in their tank they didn't like...I would find it laying on the floor next to the tank-Sadly, they out grew the 75gal and I re-homed them after the first spawn-otherwise I would still have them...really cool fish...Anyway....even with these massive water changes I never seen any spikes in water prams. I don't make 100% water changes with my Betta-but I also have lots of live plants.

Thanks for the information, and the Oscars sound like so much fun! Too big for my limited spaces, but if I ever have a larger tank...I may have to try these guys out. :)

Good to know about the surface area. I've never actually cleaned the filter media and all the sponges attached to the filter...it never seemed to be particularly grubby, so I've just left it alone. Of course, these tank set ups are only a couple of months old as well, so that's probably a lot of it.

Now I just need to tackle plants. Really, really easy plants. ;) I've heard that duckweed is very easy to grow and doesn't need much care, does it do a fair job towards assisting in water quality? Are there any plants in particular that are better than others for assisting in filtering/cleaning?